Millisecond breaks between ads are not friendly, they're disturbing

I'm going to put the blame on the shoulders of sales people and clients who write 40 seconds worth of copy for a 30. That leaves no room for music or sounds to ramp up to the talking part of the spot.

Back when I worked in radio we timed spots with a sweep second hand on a clock on the wall (or near the board). Spots were generally 29.5 seconds then. It depended on how you watched the clock as your read the copy. And running the board, you listened for the outcue and manually started the next spot. That gave you a little break between spots.

Now with digital recording you can watch a timeline and hot 29.95 seconds if you want to. And the computer plays the next file/spot as soon as the first file/spot has finished. Computers tightened things up quite a bit.

Ravens said:

I'm going to put the blame on the shoulders of sales people and clients who write 40 seconds worth of copy for a 30. That leaves no room for music or sounds to ramp up to the talking part of the spot.

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Can we get a big "AMEN" on that? I remember a salesman submitted copy to me, and would not let me cut ANYTHING out of it! So instead of airing three :30s for that client, we had to air two :60s instead. The GM heard it (and complained about it!) but I just explained the situation to him. I produced the ad, but I did not like it, either.

TheBigA said:

Where I grew up, space between things was called "dead air." So you want dead air? Listen to Sirius. They let the songs fade completely to black before they speak.

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My broadcast instructor specifically defined "dead-air" as being anything longer than two seconds.

On a similar note, I notice that there is no longer a "fade-to-black" between commercial spots on TV.

firepoint525 said:

...On a similar note, I notice that there is no longer a "fade-to-black" between commercial spots on TV.

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Maybe once in a while there might be no black, but at the TV station where I work there is almost always at least a frame of black between all elements (shows and spots).